Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Hub City Lithium’s Viewfield project area. ROK Resources.
REGINA, VANCOUVER – Hub City Lithium Corp. reported on Aug. 17 its second targeted lithium well, drilled southwest of Stoughton, has shown some of the highest brine lithium concentrations yet reported in Canada. More significantly, they closely match results from the nearby first lithium well drilled in that area.
The company is a joint venture 75 per cent owned by Vancouver-based EMP Metals Corp. and 25 per cent owned by Regina-based ROK Resources Inc. (which is the company’s operator).
The results from a multi-layer perforation and swab test of a second targeted lithium well strategically located on Hub City Lithium Corp.’s subsurface crown mineral dispositions located in the Viewfield Area of Saskatchewan. The successful step out well was approximately 800 metres east of the Viewfield discovery well.
EMP said in a press release, “Third-party laboratory testing returned lithium concentrations in the Duperow formation of up to 237 mg/L. According to public records, these test results are among the highest lithium concentrations recorded in a brine in Canada to date.”
The second well, at 4-23-7-9-W2, was drilled this past June. Its results were only slightly below the 259 mg/L that were reported from the discovery well. Other lithium explorers in Saskatchewan have reported concentrations of 172 mg/L near Torquay and 74 mg/L near Coleville, both of which their respective developers have expressed as economic.
Test Results – Table 1
| Target Duperow Interval | Average Porosity (%) | Zone Thickness (m) | Lithium Concentration (mg/l) |
| Wymark E | 9.3 | 3.3 | 118 |
| Wymark D | 11.0 | 9.7 | 237 |
| Wymark C | 11.2 | 8.3 | 166 |
| Wymark B | 13.1 | 16.2 | 102 |
| Wymark A | 13.4 | 8.0 | 99 |
| Saskatoon B | 8.1 | 10.1 | 104 |
| Saskatoon A | 12.2 | 9.7 | 89 |
Rob Gamley, EMP CEO said in release, “The results of the second Viewfield well confirm the highly-concentrated lithium resource encountered in the Viewfield discovery well. The Wymark E, D, C, B, A, and Saskatoon A zones all had lithium concentrations within the modelled range predicted by the NI 43-101 resource assessment dated April 20, 2023 (please see press release May 2, 2023). The Saskatoon B zone exceeded expectations, with a significantly higher lithium concentration (104 mg/L) than the modelled range of 50 – 75 mg/L. Importantly, the information gathered from this well will be incorporated into the company’s Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) which is on track for completion this quarter.”
Pipeline Online spoke to Cam Taylor, president and CEO of ROK Resources, by phone on Aug. 18. He said, “We drilled the second well, and got all of those numbers from the zones we tested and essentially showed that the zones kept the same lithium concentrations over the half mile distance between the two wells. So, it’s a very short distance between the two wells but the concentration stayed the same.”
They are looking at further step-out wells in the future. “This well will ultimately be used as a water injection well, and it’ll be on the site where we’ll drill our first two horizontal wells, when we actually start the pilot. And then at some point, we’ll step out about six miles to the northeast. There’s a really, really good reservoir up there. But we need to test that for lithium concentrations.”
That step-out well will be a few miles southwest of Stoughton.
Hub City is talking about a future pilot plant, dependent on whose building it. But a commercial arrangement has not been made yet. As such, no dates have been announced yet, but Taylor said it would be in the near future.
Viewfield Crater impossible to ignore
The site of the second test well, 4-23-7-9-W2, is actually just a few miles from the Viewfield Crater, one of only a handful of meteor impact craters in Canada. Also known as an astrobleme, the 2.4 kilometre diameter crater was formed when a meteor hit roughly 190 million years ago, give or take 20 million years. Over that time, it’s been buried by roughly 1300 metres of sediment, meaning it was only found through oil exploration in the 20th century.
As the Duperow formation, the target of the lithium exploration, was deposited roughly 385 to 374 million years ago, it means the meteor strike would have disturbed the Duperow, whose depth is around 1800 metres. There’s only roughly 500 metres between the Duperow formation and the crater.
Asked about the crater’s effect on their exploration and results, Taylor said, “It’s impossible to ignore it. It’s a very big geological feature in this area. So, we don’t know the answer, but it’s a very big geological feature that would have definitely crack the Duperow rocks. So I think the right way to put it is it’s an extremely unusual and large magnitude geological feature. So it is possible that it had an effect.”
The edge of the crater wall is 2.5 to 3 miles away from the most recent well. The centre would be four miles away.
He noted that the dolomitization of the Duperow is strong all the way from their Viewfield wells to their other test wells at Mansur. And he said the Duperow is less dolomitized, even though it is closer to the crater. Taylor wonders if the one unit of the Duperow that has shows much higher lithium concentrations could have been influenced by the crater.
What’s next?
Taylor said there are two important steps next. The first is the preliminary economic assessment (PEA), which is a very early stage economic assessment. “What it at least does, instead of a (National Instrument) 43-101 telling you what the what the lithium in place looks like, the preliminary economic assessment gives you some view towards what’s the capital cost requirement and what’s the operations cost?
“So it’s the next step from the 43-101 resource report. It says, ‘Let’s translate this from tonnes to dollars.’
“Hopefully, we can have that done by the end of September. It involves a lot of downstream players that provide direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology and lithium refining technology.
Taylor continued, “The second things we’re going to do is drill a well southwest of Stoughton, because there’s a very good reservoir there. And it’s better than anything we have down in this first Viewfield area we’ve drilled. We just need to understand what it is, what are the lithium concentrations?”
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